A Steaming Plate Full of Blues

I woke up this morning with a steaming plate full of the blues.  There’s nothing traumatic going on.  Just the blues in my coffee, blues in my tea, Lord have mercy, the blues are crawling all over me kind of blues.  Know what I mean?  Of course you do.  You’re human. 

I love to listen to blues music.  Lightnin’ Hopkins, Howlin’ Wolf, Big Boy Henry.  And the list goes on.  I love blues music at any time, but when I have the blues, there’s something so emotionally cathartic about it.  It’s like a howl that comes from deep down inside the soul.  Once it’s out, the soul often feels better.

Here’s a poem that matches my mood this morning.  I wrote it about a year ago, but it fits.  I tried to work some of the slower riffs of the blues rhythm into the structure of the poem to create a mood of the tide lapping at a shore.  I’m certainly not a musician, but I’m a lover of rhythm and sound. 

The theme is again a sad one for me.  People as part of a landscape that is washing away.  Thankfully, the people are not gone yet.  They have a marvelous ability to adapt.  But I fear erosion.  I mourn the day when nothing is left, except for the echo of one slow, blue note.

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Washing Away

Julie Buffaloe-Yoder

 

That old shell of a building used to be

where Jeeter Davis picked the blues,

while us girls picked the sweet meat

of blue crabs to sell for market price.

We worked with red bandanas

on our heads, and boys on our minds.

Our squeaking rubber gloves

on warm, wet wood kept time.

 

The mockingbirds sounded

like little boats chewing foam.

The shush of shovels in crushed ice

meant supper would be on the table

for at least another season.

 

Our fathers were worn out

after a good night’s catch,

their boats heavy with a living.

But they kept us full

of their stories, oh Lord, that day

Jeeter Davis sang the one about

the cheating wife and the clam bed,

we thought we would die laughing.

 

Now there’s a big, black boot,

some old net that needs mending,

and an upside down crab pot

floating in the tide.

There’s a rotten crate

with SHRIMP stenciled

on its side, the letters R, M, P

almost faded away.

There’s a mossy brown stump

where the oyster bed was,

the handle of a shovel,

and two rusty pennies, heads up,

lying in the mud.

 

There’s our old crab house

creaking in the breeze, and inside,

the briny smell still echoes

like Jeeter Davis’ cold, steel blues

sliding off the walls.

There’s glass that snaps underfoot,

three rubber gloves, a pink hair brush,

a radio that might still work,

and a guitar pick crusted with scales

stuck in a crack in the ice room door.

 

There’s half a receipt book,

and compliments

of Bell-Munden Funeral Home,

there’s an unmarked calendar

still opened to the year

when we lost our soul.

 

Across the bay,

there’s a healthy row

of condominiums growing.

They call it Fisherman’s Ridge.

There’s a billboard that has

a happy family on it.

They’re not from around here.

There’s a cartoon picture

of a boat and a shrimper

hauling in his heavy nets.

He’s bathed in light and way

too clean to be working.

 

They tell us maybe

we can get big tips over there

if we entertain the tourists

with our watermen’s accents

or serve imported crabs

in the restaurant

or mop their pretty floors.

 

So shiny, so bright,

like the Whore of Babylon,

like a brand new bay.

 

God help us.

We’re all washing.

We’re all washing away.